


Blind

by BerityBaker



Series: All in the Details [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 22:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BerityBaker/pseuds/BerityBaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is falling for Sherlock--but that doesn't mean he can't keep denying it. That theory is put to the test, however, when John hears of the explosion near 221B, and rushes back to the flat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was meant to take place at the start of The Great Game. It will by no means be long. It is a continuation of [All's Fair in Love and Drinking Games](http://archiveofourown.org/works/931216/chapters/1811863) (Part One of my first study in fan fiction), however you really don't have to read the first part as a prerequisite. And, obviously, I own nothing of what's going on in the BBC's fictional London. Enjoy!

If it weren’t for Sherlock Holmes, John would have been living a normal life, in a normal flat, perhaps with a flatmate who didn’t rely on extreme fits to cure his boredom.

It was because Sherlock Holmes existed, and because he’d deduced John’s life story before they’d officially met, that John came home to the sound of gunshots ringing upstairs.

“Mrs. Hudson?” She emerged from her own flat, seemingly oblivious to the trigger of John’s current state of panic.

“What is it, dear?”

John sighed. “Never mind.” He launched himself up the stairs, fuming, blocking out the sound of fresh gunshots. Sherlock was slouched in his chair, dressing gown over his shoulders, John’s gun in his left hand. “What the _hell_ are you doing?” John shouted.

Sherlock mumbled something unintelligible, but John had a hunch what he’d said.

“What?”

“Bored!”

He stood suddenly and put two more bullets through the wall before handing the gun to John and beginning his daily complaints of the lack of intelligent criminals in London nowadays. John assumed his meeting in Minsk hadn’t ended well.

Before long, Sherlock had sprawled across the sofa and John was busying himself with food. Strike two for the evening was the dead man staring back at him from the icebox.

“A severed head?”

“Just tea for me, thanks,” Sherlock replied from the sofa.

“There’s a head in the fridge, a bloody head,” John cried as he made his way back to the sitting room in order to confront the impossible man.

“Where else was I supposed to put it?”

John put a hand to his forehead to steady himself, and only came back to the conversation when Sherlock mentioned his write-up of the case with the serial suicides.

“Did you like it?”

“No.”

“Why not? I thought you’d be flattered.”

Sherlock shot a quote from the write-up at him, one that may not have been the most appropriate thing to post on a blog that he knew Sherlock would want to critique. It definitely didn’t paint Sherlock in the best light. He should have known it would start an argument that would begin with the middle-aged child feeling belittled and would end with one of them sulking and the other storming from the flat. That being said, it wasn’t surprising when Sherlock curled up on the couch with his back to John, and John decided to stay with Sarah for the night.

There was a bit of a nip in the air, but John wasn’t about to go back up to get a scarf or a warmer jumper. He would be at Sarah’s soon, and he would be able to rant to her about Sherlock and the wall and the bloody head in the fridge. He sent her a text in warning.

_Had a fight with Sherlock. Okay if I come over? –JW_

Her reply was quick, and to the affirmative. He was a bit relieved; if she’d been opposed, he would have had to go back and face the wrath of an intensely bored and now very disagreeable Sherlock Holmes.

When he arrived, the aroma of something delicious cooking reminded him of his hunger. “Chicken,” Sarah supplied in answer to his stomach’s question.

“Smells great.”

“I’ve made enough for two.”

He grinned. “You know the way to my heart.”

A few minutes later they were seated at the kitchen table for their impromptu dinner date.

“So what happened? What’d he do this time?”

“Well, first he shot up the wall.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Then I found the severed head he decided to store next to the milk.”

“Oh,” Sarah said, putting down her fork.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” John scrambled for something more pleasant to talk about over a meal, but instead decided to just stick to the subject of his insane flatmate. “We got into that old solar system argument again.”

“He still doesn’t get why the whole thing is mad?”

“Apparently it’s not important information. He says he ‘deleted’ it.”

“I knew it. He’s an android.”

They laughed, though John didn’t laugh for long. As much fun as it was to see Sherlock squirm in well-concealed embarrassment, it wasn’t nearly as fun talking about these things behind his back. Somehow, with everything the insufferable man had put him through up to now, guilt still pooled in the pit of John’s stomach when someone from the Yard made a joke at Sherlock’s expense, because he knew that they all originated from his own absentminded complaints. They had no right to talk that way; they didn’t live with him. Usually when they described him they left out the good bits, like his genius, or the beautiful violin music that John couldn’t bring himself to mind even at four in the morning—mostly because they weren’t exposed to them like John was.

“He’s not all bad, though,” John sighed, unwilling to leave the topic with Sherlock’s reputation in a bad spot, even if it was just Sarah. “A nice friend to have, actually.”

“Really? What’s so wonderful about being friends with Sherlock Holmes?”

He knew she hadn’t meant for it to sound malicious, so he calmed the flames that rose in him and said, “I don’t know. He can be pleasant sometimes. This one time, he followed me to the pub. We both got completely pissed. He was such a fun drunk, Sarah, you wouldn’t believe it.…” John trailed off as he recalled that he’d decided to forget that night. It had started out alright, and nothing had really happened, but at the time it had felt like everything had.

“Well, by all means, the next time I’m over, make sure he’s had a few before I get there,” Sarah said, pulling John from the stupor of remembering something he’d chosen not to, but that just wouldn’t bury itself completely. She smiled and nudged him playfully. He smiled back, although his mind was still a bit preoccupied. She sighed when he didn’t respond. “How about we watch some telly and then get some sleep, yeah?”

John blinked. “Yeah, sure. That’s…good.” He blinked again, reclaiming his thoughts, forcefully directing them toward anything but the odd situations that he often found himself in with Sherlock Holmes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's only been a week, but it feels like it's been forever. Chapter two; here we go!

John woke the next morning on Sarah’s sofa, curled up under a blanket that he didn’t remember having before. He grabbed his shirt from the back of the sofa and pulled it on, yawning and stretching.

“Morning,” Sarah said as she entered the room. John replied in kind and Sarah turned on the telly before leaving for a shower.

When he saw the familiar building on the screen, blown apart with the inner rooms exposed, his heart not only stopped, but seemed to disappear from his chest completely. The newscaster was rambling about a massive explosion at Baker Street, but all John could think was that he was relaying all the wrong information.

What had happened across the street? What about Sherlock? Was he hurt?

John leapt up with a lump in his throat just small enough to allow a panicked, shouted goodbye to Sarah before he ran out the door. He took to the streets at a relatively slow pace, considering how quickly his brain was rifling through scenarios of what might have happened to the people in the building that had exploded, what might have happened at 221B, and, most importantly, what might have happened to his flatmate. Each scene in his mind’s eye became more gruesome, more frightening than the last. Upon sight of the flat, John was a bit relieved. Even with his fleeting reassurance of himself that “if the building’s intact, so is Sherlock,” he couldn’t flush the possibility of something awful from the forefront of his consciousness. He hopped over loose and broken bits of brick in his pursuit of the door.

“Sherlock,” he kept repeating as he swiftly climbed the stairs, each time more and more desperately. His breathing heavy and shallow, John was not sure what he expected to see when he rounded the corner into the sitting room. He probably should have realized it would be Sherlock, sitting amidst broken glass and clutter that was even more disorganized than usual, plucking his violin and glaring at Mycroft coolly in the dim light that danced through stripes between boards that had been placed over the now paneless windows.

Sherlock greeted John when he entered the room as though it was completely natural to see that amount of rubble in the room. John chose not to pay attention to the two and to see the damage throughout the room, relieved that Sherlock was alright but almost equally annoyed to see him acting like he hadn’t just been in close proximity to a large explosion.

This behavior was the kind that John particularly despised in the man, although he knew it was this very attitude in Sherlock that made them such great friends. Still, explosions were different from dangerous situations that Sherlock somehow always seemed to have control over, and John grew more and more frustrated with his flatmate as he stood there and stewed.

“…What’s he like to live with? Hellish, I imagine.”

John was too strung out on the high of worry that was instantly thwarted to take much from the insult, least of all from Mycroft. “I’m never bored,” he sighed, glancing around at the debris covering the floor and walls once more.

Mycroft then approached John with a file, explaining the case in which he was trying to involve Sherlock. John paid the best attention he could, because he knew that Sherlock would send him on some sort of ridiculous chase later.

Sherlock rosined his bow and chuckled very slightly when John sassed Mycroft. The British government’s presence was even more annoying than usual to John. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to just sit and think about what had happened, about the mad fluttering in his chest that was finally fading and the fact that this time the fluttering wasn’t a part of a case, just something that neither he nor Sherlock could control. He knew being upset with himself for leaving had been irrational, yet the walk home had been fraught with personal reprimands and regrets of abandoning the conversation on the terms that he had. What if that had been the last conversation he’d had with Sherlock, or at least Sherlock as he knew him?

It wasn’t until after Mycroft left that Sherlock got a call from Lestrade. “I’ve been summoned,” he told John.

Sherlock’s excitement, though miraculously subdued after the extreme level of boredom that had left him shooting at a doodle on the wall, was contagious. John was really glad to get the man out of 221B Baker Street, for fear of any other “gas explosions.”

When Sherlock asked him if he was coming with him, there was a part of John, like there always was, that wanted very badly to say, “You bet your arse I do,” or maybe “The day I stop running off to crime scenes with you will be the day I committed the crime.” But instead he replied in one of his usual ways, masking the wonder and excitement and utter astonishment that his life was turning out so well after all. “If you want me to.”

On the way out the door, Sherlock replied with the words that John would always remember, for years to come. He would bring them to mind when things didn’t go his way, or when Sherlock was being particularly frustrating, or even when the idea that Sherlock considered him a friend wavered, he would revel in their comfort. It was one simple statement that would later change his life. He supposed it already had changed his life preemptively.

“Of course. I’d be lost without my blogger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a feeling the next chapter will be the last in this sub-story. There's not a lot to do with this one; the next one will be more substantial. A bit angsty, some John epiphany, and a very important character without which we would be slightly less sexually frustrated and my giant Pooh Bear would be much less tearstained.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's late and I'm sorry it's short but here's the chapter I owed last weekend. Literally JUST finished it. Cut me some slack, I'm an actor/writer in college with too many tabs open with fics I've yet to read. I promise to get to some more writing for next week.

John was once again sitting in a cab headed toward the Yard, silently pondering the morning's events. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, realizing how much had happened and how much stress he’d been under, all before eleven o’clock.

His mind still buzzed with concern for Sherlock. He kept telling himself that there was no reason for that much worry over a man who clearly wasn’t worried for himself, that he was a _soldier_ , for God’s sake. Why should he care about what was over and done, and hadn’t left the slightest trace of anything harmful behind? There wasn’t even a scratch on the man. The sitting room may have been a bit worse for wear, but there was nothing to truly fear now that he knew Sherlock was okay.

Still, his heart beat out of control when he looked away from his flatmate for too long, and he was forced to glance over at him just to reassure himself. Although Sherlock was clearly distracted with the passing streets of London, he was bound to notice eventually, the observant bastard.

Sure enough, Sherlock seemed to latch onto a particularly loud sigh of relief that escaped from John. “John?”

John turned to fully look at him. “Yeah?”

Sherlock paused, staring him up and down. “You’re worried.”

John nodded reluctantly.

“What about?”

John shook his head. “Nothing, Sherlock.” _Just having a continuous panic attack over something that happened to_ you _twelve hours ago._

Sherlock may as well have shrugged. He turned back to the window and continued to gaze out, ignoring the continued pounding in John’s chest.

How could he not see what the explosion had done to John? He saw everything, observed the world almost omnisciently. How could he be so completely blind to the unexplainable disquiet behind John’s exterior calm?

It struck John suddenly that maybe he felt this way because he hadn’t been there to stop it. He wasn’t usually at odds with Sherlock’s mortality, probably because he was always there to keep it at bay. It struck him how important it was to him to keep Sherlock alive after only having known him for less than two months. He hadn’t become attached to someone so fast in his life. He chalked it up to his inherent desire for danger.

Still, he thought back to his night of drinking with Sherlock. A few weeks had passed, and he still couldn’t bring himself past Sherlock’s sloppy lips on his. He kept pushing that particular explanation of his unfounded anxiety over the man’s well-being over and over, until he was overcome with the feeling that he wasn’t going to be able to much longer.

He didn’t say anything to Sherlock. He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure if Sherlock had even been coherent enough to remember the incident. He sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up. He would just wait for Sherlock to mention it.

But what if he never did? It occurred to John that he might never get to have that conversation with a mindset like that. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure he could handle either scenario.

“Sherlock,” he began, with resolve.

Sherlock turned to him.

He shook his head, the words lost as soon as he’d made eye contact. He shook his head ever so slightly, clearing it while also willing Sherlock to ignore him. Sherlock took the hint and turned back to the window.

They continued to ride in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember, next week! Also, remember, I love ideas and prompts! Send them on Tumblr! ([holdencaulfieldinthetardis](http://holdencaulfieldinthetardis.tumblr.com/))


End file.
